ESPN’s Blackout Of Roethlisberger Story

10:01 pm EST July 22nd, 2009 | Media, Sports | 5 Comments

Protecting their broadcast partner. They should stop calling themselves a sports news organization.

The accusations of sexual assault contained in a civil lawsuit filed against Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger have been widely reported in the sports and entertainment news media — except by ESPN.

The sports-media giant’s single exemption from its reporting blackout has been to let its ESPN Radio station in Pittsburgh update the case in news reports. But the station’s talk-show hosts are prohibited from discussing it.

…

The ban on reporting the lawsuit was issued on ESPN’s internal newswire and e-mail system at 10:48 p.m. Eastern Monday, after the news began to break. Doria said ESPN’s caution was to protect Roethlisberger from the fallout of potentially false allegations, not to shield its TV partner, the N.F.L.

Yeah, right. The NFL is worth billions to ESPN/ABC/Disney and Big Ben is a marquee name.

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5 Responses to “ESPN’s Blackout Of Roethlisberger Story”

  1. Jay says:
    July 22, 2009 at 10:32 pm

    Good grief what a bunch of nonsense. This isn’t tabloid nonsense that is originating from Perez Hilton or TMZ.

    ESPN had no problem reporting about the civil suit filed against Robert Alomar alleging he made a woman have unprotected sex despite him supposedly being HIV positive (which he has denied) so the notion they are doing this in an attempt to protect Roethlisberger’s reputation is a bunch of crap.

    Link to Alomar story:

    http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3900719

  2. joaquin says:
    July 23, 2009 at 9:14 am

    If news organizations, which ESPN is, would report the news as opposed to opining, they would have nothing to worry about.
    When news outlets begin to editorialize, they no longer ‘report’ objectively.

  3. jr says:
    July 23, 2009 at 9:56 am

    “We’re all Steelers fans now”-ESPN Nixon

  4. Leroy Brown says:
    July 23, 2009 at 10:51 am

    I’m disappointed, but can’t say I’m too surprised. The NFL is notorious for it’s draconian policies regarding it’s image. Remember Playmakers? Awesome show that depicted an NFL team that *shock* used drugs and had extramarital affairs! The NFL pressured ESPN to cancel it. The Madden games can’t have anything even remotely controversial – they even made them curtail the touchdown celebration options.

    In ESPN (and Disney’s) defense, I wouldn’t want to piss off one of the biggest money-makers on earth either. I also haven’t seen any evidence yet. It’s one thing to talk about cold hard facts, but a) the police refused to prosecute and b) I haven’t seen ANY outlet cover this other than a blurb on Fox’s homepage. Anyone remember Kobe Bryant? Remember how he was innocent an yet they dragged him through the mud for rape? Hell, maybe we should be happy ESPN isn’t declaring another person a rapist without evidence.

  5. CB says:
    July 24, 2009 at 1:57 am

    Why would this woman not say something for over one year? She claims she feared losing her job at Harrah’s…hmmm. It is one of two things…one of the greateat cover-ups by Harrah’s and Big Ben (NFL) or a patheitc attempt to extract money from a high profile professional athlete. Since the police have announced that they will not be conducting an investigation my guess is the latter of the two scenarios.